When To Let Go...

The boy is 14 and entering High School this fall. He is at the age where he is too old to coddle yet too young to be left on his own. I look at him now and look at myself at the same age. At 14 I had been drunk once, kissed a girl, took my bike out after school and did not come home until the street lights came on. We would sneak our Dad's Playboys out and once found a Hustler in the park and kept it hid for weeks always going back and checking it out. I wandered far from home on bike or foot.

I was also a good student, Boy Scout, Alter Boy and on the Baseball team, Basketball team, Swim team, and Soccer team.

How much freedom does he get? Currently he always asks to do things and yet sometimes I feel we are suffocating him as his friends seem much freer then he. The teens are not only confusing for the child just entering them, they are confusing for the first time parents......